Thursday, 30 August 2018

Causation and grand narratives

"Populism is the true legacy of the global financial crisis", FT.com 30/08/18 < https://www.ft.com/content/687c0184-aaa6-11e8-94bd-cba20d67390c >

This whole narrative is simplistic and under-theorised. The attribution of cause and effect is not necessarily incorrect but it is built on very shaky foundations.

Generally attributing causation is a very dubious historical exercise. This example is a completely processualist model of supra-regional historical change - so its theoretical basis is open to all the criticisms of every other processualist approach.

I suggest Trump and brexit have as much to do with culture wars as with economics. Were those caused by the crash? I rather think there were quite a lot of people who felt that their sincerely-held views were being silenced by political correctness beforehand; I distinctly remember school-friends talking about how Muslim immigrants were stealing people's jobs back in 2006.

In democracies, the percentage shift of opinion does not have to be very big to get a different bunch of people elected - so we might be justified in talking about much less headline-grabbing factors than instantly looking to grand-scale systemic events like the financial crisis.

Try getting someone with a relevant degree to do (or at least review) your sweeping historical narratives before you publish, you'll end up with a more rigorous product. I don't know about the rest of your readership but academic excellence is one of the reasons I take the FT.

No comments:

Post a Comment